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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
American Gyro by Jim Zervanos follows eighteen-year-old Johnny Demos, the grandson of a Greek restaurateur in Kornfield, Pennsylvania, after a school play gives him a first taste of acting. Papou’s death leaves the Old Kornfield Inn in Uncle Nick’s hands, and Johnny is expected to take his place inside the family business. Then Mitch Mitchell, a cousin working in New York film, offers Johnny a summer position on Shadow King, a low-budget movie connected to Johnny’s screen idol, Dante Saludo. Johnny believes the project may give him access to the life he has only imagined in secret for himself from behind the restaurant bar. As filming nears, a crisis at home reaches him in New York, forcing him to measure the dream against the family that shaped him.
Jim Zervanos’s American Gyro is an extremely thoughtful novel and is deeply rooted in family. The author puts tenderness inside plain family routines, like when Papou blesses Johnny’s wish before death enters the bedroom. Johnny is likable because his hunger for acting never erases his affection for the people who molded him. Big, Johnny’s cousin, is fiercely loyal, leaning in and protecting Johnny’s play lie at the airport, then later warns him in New York that cousin Mitch may be after something more. The author injects life into every single space, giving it texture and grit. The Old Kornfield Inn breathes through shucked oysters beside the bar, while the Brooklyn Bridge film shoot turns sunrise into movie craft. Readers who like literary fiction about young adulthood and the balance between independence and duty, with a side of acting and extra tzatziki, will love this.
